ZERO TOLERANCE

Unbeaten.

Unblemished.

Unlikely, but not unimaginable.

Who can blame Westlake High’s baseball team for trying?

As long as the number in the Warriors’ loss column remains a big, fat zero, they gotta believe.

They believed enough to come back from a three-run, fifth-inning deficit against City Section power El Camino Real.

Enough to steal a one-run victory over Marmonte League rival Thousand Oaks.

Enough to eke out a victory at Royal for the first time in 10 years.

Enough to survive an extra-inning game against Chaminade.

Enough to knock off previously unbeaten Crespi.

“My guys think they can’t lose,” Coach Chuck Berrington said. “They know they will find a way. Attitude is everything.”

Westlake is 13-0. Two more victories will equal the school record set in 1990, when the Warriors were ranked No. 1 in the nation and finished 28-2.

But getting through a season unbeaten is like walking through a minefield.

One misstep and . . . Kablooey!

Nobody (except an opponent or two) wants to see that happen.

Especially those who have been through the experience. In the last 16 years, three teams from the region entered the playoffs unbeaten only to lose.

Three stabs at perfection ending in fatal wounds.

* Calabasas, 1995: The Coyotes sailed through 25 victories, falling behind only three times. But in the Southern Section semifinals, they were defeated, 4-0, by right-hander Leonard Magdalena of Rialto, who had won two games all season.

Calabasas watched its unbeaten mark literally fly away.

“We had a bird that hung out at our field every game, it was our lucky bird,” said Scott Drootin, the Coyotes’ coach at the time. “Then in our last game, the bird wasn’t there. NBC-TV was there. Two thousand people were there. And we were looking for the bird.”

Drootin, coach at Chaminade, isn’t reluctant to crow about Westlake. He liked what he saw in the Warriors’ 13-6 victory over Chaminade earlier this season.

Chaminade had a chance to win in the seventh inning, but with two out right fielder Cory Taillon of Westlake threw out a runner at first base on what appeared to be a game-winning single. Westlake won in extra innings.

“They are playing loose right now,” Drootin said. “Their players are enjoying it. I like the Westlake kids, they are respectful and work hard.

“But going undefeated is like bowling a 300 game.”

* Hart, 1988: With a nucleus of players who won several Pony League national championships, the Indians were 26-0 before losing at home to Fullerton, 12-7, in the second round of the playoffs.

Ace right-hander Jason Edwards, who was 11-0, hurt his elbow in a first-round game and was unavailable when Fullerton began to bang the ball around the ballpark.

“That injury was crucial,” said Bud Murray, who retired as Hart coach after winning a Southern Section title last season.

Murray had a series of winning teams at Hart, but only the ’88 team entered the playoffs unbeaten.

“I didn’t really feel there was a lot of pressure there, but I knew that when the team lost, it would be devastating,” he said. “To go undefeated, there is so much luck involved. Baseball is a different type of sport. You can hit the ball hard and lose. A lot of things can happen.”

Hart didn’t take its loss as hard as Murray anticipated because most of the players were juniors and sophomores. There was always next year, which in this case resulted in a loss in a Southern Section final.

“That was much tougher,” Murray said. “The locker room was like a morgue.”

* Notre Dame, 1984: Led by pitcher Jack McDowell, the Knights won 27 games and were ranked No. 1 in the nation by USA Today before losing to Long Beach Millikan, 5-0, in the section semifinals.

Notre Dame was not popular with opponents. The Knights were involved in a bench-clearing, bat-swinging brawl with Walnut. St. John Bosco Coach Ed Riley said the Knights “mouth off and show no respect for the opposition.”

McDowell, Southern Section 4-A co-player of the year, was the ringleader.

“I guess the image of me was that I was hotheaded, had a quick temper, which I did at times,” he said in 1985. “If you play sports, that’s going to happen.”

The No. 1 ranking was the source of pressure and problems.

“Just because we were rated No. 1, everyone came out to kill us,” McDowell said. “So we got pumped up for every game. [But] we took as much heat as we dished out.”

Like Calabasas, Notre Dame fell victim to a hot pitcher and an unfamiliar task--coming from behind.

*

Then there was the 1990 Westlake team, the standard by which the 2000 Warriors will be measured.

Led by catcher Mike Lieberthal, who plays for the Philadelphia Phillies, the Warriors were elevated to No. 1 by USA Today on the day they lost in the semifinals to Huntington Beach Marina.

Marina entered the game with a record of 15-12-1. Westlake was 28-1, but the team batting average had been dipping for weeks.

Marina won, 4-1, when the Warriors’ normally tight defense cracked and the hitting slump continued.

Upsets are more common in baseball than other sports because luck seems to play a bigger part. Plus, a good pitcher can make a weak team formidable on any day.

Only four teams in the state have finished unbeaten since 1970: Santa Maria St. Joseph (29-0) in ‘97, Ontario (26-0) and Temecula Linfield (25-0) in ‘91, and Monroe (19-0) in 1971.

None played a schedule nearly as difficult as Westlake’s.

The Warriors play Royal and Thousand Oaks next week, then play Notre Dame in two nonleague games before playing in a spring break tournament in San Jose that includes several top teams from Northern California and Nevada.

“I like being undefeated, but it is unrealistic to think we can get through a schedule this tough,” Berrington said. “The guys are more focused on winning league and getting to the [Southern Section] final and winning. We’d definitely be down if we lost, but we’d get right back up the next day.”

Every great team puts its personal stamp on opponents. Westlake’s is depth. A different star seems to emerge each week.

A record six Warriors played in the Area Code Games last summer--pitcher-first basemen Jesse Kozlowski and Tyler Adamczyk, infielders Ryan McCarthy and Jeff Dragicevich, catcher Mike Nickeas and outfielder Jon Shepard.

Lesser-known but equally solid are outfielders Cory Taillon and Luke Riordan. Infielders Jamie Hesselgesser and Allen Osborne, and utility player Matt Silver have made contributions.

The pitching staff is deep. Tall right-handed starters Kozlowski and Adamczyk are dominant power pitchers. McCarthy is a savvy closer and junior Chris White, sophomore Tyler Carr, submariner Joe Guy and left-hander Justin Blane have been effective.

Can Westlake avoid the pitfalls that tripped others--key injuries, loud mouths, quiet bats and vanishing birds?

“The reason this is a perfect team is not our record, it’s that everybody gets along and sticks together,” Berrington said. “We’ll see how far we can take it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

UNBEATEN DREAMS

High school baseball teams ranked in state top 20 without a loss as of Wednesday:

Westlake

(13-0)

Bishop Amat

(12-0)

West Torrance

(12-0)

Westminster La Quinta

(15-0)

Bakersfield Centennial

(12-0)

Cal-Hi Sport’s Top 5 state rankings:

1. Rancho Bernardo

(9-1)

2. Westlake

(13-0)

3. Temecula Valley

(9-1)

4. Bishop Amat

(12-0)

5. Villa Park

(12-1)